Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War

“We’re not inflicting pain on these fuckers. When people kill us, they should be killed in greater numbers. I believe in killing people who try to hurt you. And I can’t believe we’re being pushed around by these two-bit pricks.”

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This statement comes from former President Bill Clinton when referring to the United States’ invasion of Somalia in 1993 and is the opening paragraph in Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War–an excellent and timely book by Dennis Perrin.

Many people in liberal or progressive circles tend to equate the Democratic Party with an anti-war platform. Even the news media will often frame Democratic candidates as anti-war or political “doves.” However, Perrin’s basic thesis is that Democratic presidents have always endorsed war and are not “anti-war.” Savage Mules is not a scholarly book, but rather is a populist reading of the historical positions that Democratic presidents have taken in regards to war.

Starting with the founder of the Party, Andrew Jackson, the author presents an overview of every Democratic president and which wars they have started or continued. Jackson, of course, engaged in several brutal military campaigns against Native Americas, most notably the Trail of Tears. The Mexican-American War took place during James Polk’s rule of the White House and Woodrow Wilson not only got the US involved in World War I, but his administration invaded and occupied Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Nicaragua.

FDR was a Democrat that went to war against Japan, Italy, and Germany and his Democratic successor Harry Truman not only dropped A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but he prosecuted the war in Korea. JFK, the attractive, youthful president was the first president to send troops to Southeast Asia and after his assassination, the Democrat Lyndon Johnson escalated that war on the poor people of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Kennedy was also responsible for the initial creation of death squads throughout Latin America with his program, the Alliance for Progress.

Carter supported the Indonesian War against East Timor, backed the Shah of Iran, backed the military regime in South Korea, and backed the Afghan militia that provoked the Soviet Union to invade Afghanistan. Clinton was by no means a pacifist, with his invasion of Somalia, the bombing of Kosovo, and the constant bombing of Iraq throughout the 1990s that accompanied brutal economic sanctions that led to the deaths of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children.

Recently, there has been much discussion about the failure of the Democratic controlled Congress to stop the ongoing US occupation of Iraq. However, for anyone that reads Savage Mules, it would come as no surprise that the US has not changed its position since the 2006 elections.

Perrin ends the book with a brief discussion on the idea of pragmatism, war, and the Obama campaign. It is the weakest chapter in the book and perhaps he would have been better off by ending with the Democrats’ continued backing of the war in Iraq, but beyond this chapter, the book is an important contribution to the discussion of partisan politics and war.

Dennis Perrin, Savage Mules: The Democrats and Endless War, (Verso, 2008).

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Tags: antiwar, democrats, united states, us foreign policy, war